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Self-confessed childrens books “big mouth,” Lisa Von Drasek, Curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collections.at the U. of Minn., and former EW Kids Correspondent, appeared recently on Minnesota Public Radio to discuss the best kids books of 2017. She is joined by St. Paul indie bookseller, Holly Weinkauf from the Red Balloon Bookshop. It’s worth a listen just for the infectious joy in their voices, not to mention the books they’ll make you want to pick up immediately. Lisa notes that they “discussed fifty-five books in less than an hour and didn’t even get to every one that we brought with us.” For the complete list go to No Kidding: The Best Kids’ Books to Give This Holiday Season.

They highlight cookbooks, giving special praise to Pizza, from Phaidon’s Cook in Book series, interactive titles that allow kids to virtually create recipes from scratch.

Lisa is blogging at the Blue Ox Review, the site she recently founded to “review books, give a heads up on upcoming titles that I am excited about, link to interesting news and events, and show off cool stuff from my collection. Of course, there will be an occasional rant.”

On the site, she is doing her annual “Books to give kids you don’t know very well,” (archive here) to help booksellers and librarians navigate the “maddening game” of recommending the exactly perfect gift for kids customers may see only once a year:

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The two big winners from last week’s Emmy Awards, HBO’s Big Little Lies and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale are both based on self-contained books, making the highly desired sequels problematic. Nevertheless, the producers are working with the authors to come up with new storylines. Liane Moriarity has only admitted to “thinking about” a followup to Lies, but Deadline reports on rumors that she has written a novella to serve as the basis for a sequel.

Two film sequels will compete this weekend to knock the surprise hit, Stephen King’s It out of first place at the box office. Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the second in the film franchise based on Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ comics series The Secret Service, opens in 3,900 theaters, as does the family film, The LEGO Ninjago Movie. Several tie-ins to the latter are available from Scholastic and DK; see our tie-ins list here.

Not a sequel, but the English-language version of a Swedish hit, A Man Called Ove, based on the best-seller by Fredrik Backman, is in the works and Tom Hanks has signed to play the lead.

Several new trailers were released in the last week, including the first for a new adaptation of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, indicating that the movie will have little in common with the original, other than the characters’ names.

Calling it “The Breakfast Club meets murder mystery,” Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+ and says “McManus knows how to plot out a mystery, but the real charm of the novel lies in the journey each of the characters goes on … [a] pretty stellar summer read.”

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As promised, John Green devoted yesterday’s vlogbrothers video to his forthcoming book,Turtles All the Way Down (PRH/Dutton YR; Oct 10; cover art to come), his first novel since 2012’s The Fault in Our Stars.

He doesn’t reveal anything about the book’s content, talking instead about the special ISBN for signed copies, causing pre-orders for that edition to spike. Along the way, he explains what ISBN’s are, knowledge he gained while working at Booklist.

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Turtles All the Way Down is the title of John Green’s next YA novel, (PRH/Dutton Books for Young Readers; 9780525555360; cover not finalized) releasing on October 10. It is his first novel in six years, following 2012’s The Fault in Our Stars.

The title refers to a story which Stephen Hawking relates in A Brief History of Time. Faced with the theory that the world is flat, held on the back of a turtle, a famous astronomer asks what the turtle stands on. The answer reveals the illogic of the theory, “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

It’s just one of many metaphors readers can expect, according to the Penguin’s UK site, quoting Green, “The great thing about figurative language and symbols and the like in novels is that you don’t have to be conscious of them for them to work.”

UPDATE: Green talks about the book in a bonus Vlogbrothers video, below. He invites viewers to post questions about it and promises to try to answer them on his next video, scheduled for Tuesday, June 27.

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A tiny but hardy pup, approached ultra-marathoner Dion Leonard during a long distance race in China across part of the Gobi Desert. She stayed with him, running nearly 80 miles. Leonard named her after the desert.

Her story, and his, gets even more dramatic. Once the run was over Gobi disappeared in a Chinese city while Leonard was raising funds to adopt her and take her back to his home in Scotland. An international effort launched on the Internet helped find her, hurt but ultimately OK.

He says that he has no idea why she came to him in the wilderness, “whether it was my smell — we don’t shower during the week in these races — or whether it was something else, whether it was a past life connection. It was definitely fate and I’m so glad that she chose me … she’s brought lots of joy to people around the globe with our story.”

That story is captured in Finding Gobi: A Little Dog with a Very Big Heart by Dion Leonard with Craig Borlase (HC/Thomas Nelson, June 13; Thomas Nelson Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Coming August 9 are YA and children’s versions:

Finding Gobi: Young Reader’s Edition: The True Story of One Little Dog’s Big Journey by Dion Leonard, adapted by Aaron Rosenberg (HC/Thomas Nelson).

Described by Deadline as being about “a box of crayons whose inhabitants go on strike against their young owner after growing sick of how they’re being used, as their individual colors dictate very limited day-to-day existences for each crayon,” it’s not mentioned how fraught assumptions about color can be, as Betsy Bird explored in a post on her SLJ blog, Fuse Eight.

As NPR’s The Salt points out, these sweet concoctions are just a fraction of Roald Dahl’s culinary imagination. He also thought of giant chocolate cakes baked with blood and sweat (from Matilda) and doughnuts stuffed with goose-liver paste (Fantastic Mr. Fox).

Lucy Dahl joins the show to talk about how her dad filled her childhood with fantasies about food, claiming that the Queen sent the Dahls red cabbage from her very own garden or that the quail eggs they ate at breakfast really belonged to the Minpins who lived in the woods behind their house.

Dahl’s interest in food was not just literary. He saw treats as a way to instill magic in his children’s lives, waking them up at night to share chocolate and creating midnight feats they would consume after they walked in the woods in their pajamas looking for badgers, fortified by hot chocolate and cookies consumed on the way.

After Dahl died his family published a cookbook in 1997 as an homage to his focus on food, Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes (PRH/Puffin). Some of the dishes include Snozzcumbers and Crispy Wasp Stings on a Piece of Buttered Toast.

The Salt also takes some of Dahl’s iconic foods into the kitchen and with the help of Andrew Rea, the host of the YouTube show Binging With Babish, creates the giant cake from Matilda (warning, don’t watch if you are eating – or about to eat).

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Chris Colfer, who has gone from actor on Glee to author of The Land of Stories series to screenwriter and director, will adapt his children’s novel The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell (Hachette/ Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Hachette Audio; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) for the silver screen.

The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “striking move” for the 27-year-old.

The Wishing Spell is the first book in what has become a multimillion dollar franchise. The larger universe includes novels, picture books, chapter books, and a forthcoming graphic novel.

The final novel in the series will be published on July 11, Worlds Collide (Hachette/ Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Blackstone Audio).

Twentieth Century Fox and the 21 Laps studio will jointly create the film. The later is responsible for Arrival, Stranger Things, and the upcoming adaptation of Alexandra Bracken’s The Darkest Minds series.

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In an odd bit of timing two films related to the beloved books and poems of A. A. Milne are headed to the movies.

The first is Goodbye Christopher Robin starring Domhnall Gleeson as A. A. Milne, Margot Robbie as his wife Daphne, as well as several actors who play Christopher at different ages.

The story focuses on Milne’s relationship with his son, the success of his books, and the effect the entire process had on Christopher himself. Variety describes it as “a bittersweet story of the little boy who inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.”

It premieres October 13, 2017. The trailer is currently the #1 trending video on YouTube.

Disney is also making a film on the same subject, titled Christopher Robin. Ewan McGregor is set to star according to The Hollywood Reporter.